Shasta Co. kids plant trees, look to future

11/23/15 -- A group of sixth graders from a Shasta County elementary school joined with staff from the BLM Redding Field Office earlier this month for a habitat improvement project at the China Garden Picnic Area in the Clear Creek Greenway. The project was an opportunity for the children to apply the lessons they have been learning in their classroom and in their school’s greenhouse.

Students teamed up to plant a tree in the Clear Creek Greenway. BLM photo/Laura Brodhead

Dirt was flying as the children, working in teams of three, planted 60 trees and shrubs that had been started in their own greenhouse at Happy Valley Elementary School nearby. They planted live oak, valley oak and coyote brush plants in areas that they carefully cleared of competing yellow star thistle plants.

After their planting work, the students had some time to explore the area around the creek. They looked for salmon, talked about food webs, and talked about all the bear scat in the area. Additionally, the students helped collect buckets full of valley oak acorns. These acorns were put to the viability test and dropped into a bucket of water. If they sank, that meant they were still viable. The good acorns will be planted in the greenhouse for future classes to use in future restoration plantings.

Laura Brodhead, a forest ecology intern at the BLM Redding Field Office, talks to Happy Valley School sixth graders in front of their school greenhouse. (BLM photo)

Every other week, at a greenhouse on their school property, the sixth graders attend lessons taught by BLM staff about native ecosystems and all their components. For the students, this field trip was their first introduction to the idea of restoration and let them get their hands dirty while doing it! The students were able to apply what they had been learning about native ecosystems to the restoration of public lands.

Finally, the students had the chance to summarize the day by drawing two pictures. At the top of the page was the current condition found at the China Garden site, while the bottom of the page depicted the desired future condition, or what the artist envisioned as a future for the site.

A student’s rendering of the current and desired future condition for China Garden.

Another rendering of the current and future conditions at China Garden.

“The field trip was a great success measured in so many ways,” said Laura Brodhead, a forest ecology intern at the BLM in Redding. “There are trees out in the field competing with yellow star thistle, and acorns were collected for future restoration efforts. But more than anything, the students actually made it out to the public land to put to use everything they had learned about native ecosystems.”

China Garden is a former agriculture field within the BLM’s Clear Creek Greenway near the Shasta County community of Anderson. It is dominated by yellow star thistle and other invasive plants. The Redding Field Office is working with partners including the Western Shasta Resource Conservation District and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to restore this and other sites within the Clear Creek Greenway.

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